A few weeks ago, I ran into a senior colleague who mentioned she was off to Yaddo for seven weeks to finish her book. I was delighted to hear that she’d successfully made the case to Yaddo that historians belong at a writer’s colony, traditionally the dominion of poets, playwrights, and fiction writers. Writing history is both an intensely intellectual and profoundly creative endeavor, but this claim often draws quizzical looks from playwrights and other “traditional” creative writers.